I drive through Albany on my way to Art in the Valley several times a month. Crossing over the railway bridge I admire the trains, but there’s no place to pull over and stop. So last month, I made a point of pulling into the station and walking up the bridge to photograph the trains. I may do it again at a different time of day.

Botticelli’s Birth of Venus is stunning, but it never captured the delivery part of birth for me. Botticelli’s Venus is serene. She is arriving at the shore, the messy birth process long behind her. My Venuses are actually in the process of emerging from the sea foam.

Initially, this painting was inspired by a bird’s nest left over from last Spring. Looking at the nest, the woman with bird’s nest hair and the whitewater dress rising from the ground just came to me. She became Persephone as painted her. Now she is drowsily sinking back into the earth before her return to Hades and the Underworld. She’ll be back in the Spring.

This is the Plaza Mayor in the village of Zahara, Cadiz Province, Spain. The village is one of the more picturesque pueblos blancos in Andulacia. The church I’ve painted is known as the Torre del Reloj (Yellow Tower), and it dominates the square.

This is Seville’s Plaza de Espana where Spain held the Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Seville went all out for this World Fair venue. The plaza is a beautiful mix of Art Deco and Spanish Renaissance Revival, Spanish Baroque Revival and Neo-Mudéjar styles.

During our trip to Spain, I fell in love with the mudejar horseshoe arches. This particular arch is in the Palacio de la Condesa de Lebrija in Seville. The Palace is an architectural hodgepodge, with mudejar and Renaissance elements and ancient Roman mosaic floors.

No these falls aren’t actually named the Aqua Falls. I don’t know their name. I think of them as the aqua falls, because the water is the most beautiful aqua color there. There being the first falls on the Opal Creek Trail, east of Salem, Oregon. If you hike the trail you’ll find them just as you reach the abandoned mill machinery. You have to scramble a little off trail down some rocks to reach this view of them. The good news is you’ll probably have them to yourself.

Setenil de los Bodegas of Cadiz Province, Spain is one of the more interesting pueblos blancos of Andulacia. Unlike most pueblos blancos it occupies either ridge of a valley rather than a hilltop. Many of the houses are semi-troglodyte, occupying shallow caves in the valley walls. One street includes a natural tunnel.

The view in this painting is from our apartment porch in Setenil looking across at the old castile.

This is my on-line studio. Here, I post my paintings (and some of my failures) as I paint them. Most of the paintings shown here are for sale through this blog.

All of the paintings on this blog are copyrighted by me. Should you wish to use one of my images on your blog or site, please contact me first. Provided you link to me and are not profiting from the image, I generally will grant permission.